Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/79

 Rh their shoulders and say, "'T is a pity Neighbour Hearne standeth apart from Church;" or "'T is passing strange Dame Gurton should be so maliciously disposed." By no means! They saw to it that Hearne either went to church, or stood his trial for heresy; and they brought the sour old woman to a more amiable frame of mind, or to the witch's stake. Neither did they observe with scholarly composure that the adoption of the cat by the black race of sorcerers was a "curious custom, worthy of research." They said, "Like master, like servant;" and tossed poor Pussy into the terrible bonfire which blazed for her on the Eve of Saint John.

Now and then a student, gentle and profound, as one Balthazar Bekker of fragrant memory, asserted the innocence of the cat,—perhaps he had a kitten of his own,—and declared the dog to be more deeply versed than she in the unholy arts of necromancy. But the people knew better than this. The frank integrity of the dog was unmistakable. One wag of his honest tail disarmed suspicion. Blunder he might, and fall perchance from grace; but the subtle witchery of the cat was far beyond his canine comprehension.

Moreover the weight of evidence was always against the cat. At the trial of Rebecca Walther, a woman of Neuchatel who was strangled as a sorceress in 1647, it was proven that a neighbour's